Portable Neovim. How to change default data folder? How to avoid registry entries?

Question

I'm trying to make a protable Neovim so I can use my plug&play IDE from a USB thumbdrive on any offline Windows computer.

I managed to store my plugins and my sysinit.vim onto the USB drive and make Neovim use them.

But while testing I realized that Neovim creates some folders on the host computer.

~\AppData\Local\nvim-data\shada and ~\AppData\Local\nvim-data\swap

Are there more?

In the manual I found that I can change where swap files are stored by setting directory which currently is ~\AppData\Local\nvim-data\swap\\

What about the ShaDa directory?

Is there any way to change stdpath('data')?

I guess there is no way to prevent nvim-qt to create registry entries? (beside making my own build)

Answer 1

Are there more?

Swap, undo, shada, log... Whatever is found there.

I can change where swap files are stored

IMO, just set noswapfile and forget it.

What about the shada directory?

Read :h shada-n Get used to this: when you need something it's in the help.

I guess there is no way to prevent

Everything is possible. But, at the very least, shada/viminfo is too useful to switch it off.

Is there any way to change stdpath('data')?

From :h standard-path

The $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $XDG_DATA_HOME environment variables are used if they exist, otherwise default values (listed below) are used

Answer 2

C:> set LOCALAPPDATA=Z:\appdata
C:> cd Z:\appdata
The system cannot find the path specified.

C:> nvim.exe --headless +":echo 'Vim datapath:'stdpath('data')|q"
Vim datapath: Z:\appdata\nvim-data

C:> cd /d Z:\appdata\nvim-data\shada
Z:\appdata\nvim-data\shada>

#ifdef MSWIN
static const char *const xdg_defaults_env_vars[] = {
  [kXDGConfigHome] = "LOCALAPPDATA",
  **[kXDGDataHome] = "LOCALAPPDATA",**
  [kXDGCacheHome] = "TEMP",
  [kXDGStateHome] = "LOCALAPPDATA",
  [kXDGRuntimeDir] = NULL,  // Decided by vim_mktempdir().
  [kXDGConfigDirs] = NULL,
  [kXDGDataDirs] = NULL,
};
#endif

Source: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/blob/master/src/nvim/os/stdpaths.c#L24